Laura
Being stalked is a weird thing in that knowing who your stalker is doesn’t actually stop the stalking.
I sit in my apartment. Nothing looks the same as it did before. Dr. Samuel Rollins is on television, marketing his book:Melting at Room Temperature: a modern guide to emotional regulation.
I think the title is wordy and corny, and a little too meta for most people to get, but he knows that. Creatures like him know how to calibrate themselves to be just the right level of not quite relatable. Makes people want to gain his approval because they get the sense he’s just that little bit smarter than them. Not so smart they hate him reflexively, just the right level of comforting intellect.
It’s all part of his carefully curated exterior. And the best part, from his perspective, is that having a carefully curated exterior is part of the job. So people know he’s fake and accept it because he’s supposed to be.
Right now, I’m not being stalked by him, because this is a live morning TV interview and he’s on the East Coast.
“Are you single, Dr. Rollins?” The interviewer is looking at him with gleaming doe eyes.
I feel a pulse of jealousy.
“What the fuck, Laura?” I curse the question at myself. I’m not supposed to care what he does. I should be happy if someone else catches his eye.
Can your stalker and captor cheat on you, technically? There’s no indication he would, but I’m figuring the relationship itself doesn’t exactly imply monogamy.
“I’m not, actually,” he says.
“Lucky lady,” she replies.
I shouldn’t feel so excited about his response. He didn’t say I was his partner. He can’t, of course. Would really fuck his whole stalking plan up.
My phone rings. It’s my mom.
I pick up. I have a full day of classes, so I hope she doesn’t have anything too serious for me to…
“Laura! I need you to get Jake from school. He’s been suspended for fighting.”
“How? It’s not even nine in the morning!”
“He got into a fight at eight-thirty,” she says. “Please, pick him up and do something with him today. I’ve got work all day.”
“I have classes, Mom. He will have to come with me, I guess?”
“Whatever you do with him, just… do something,” she says. “I have to go.”
My brother is not in a good state. He’s pissed. His jacket is torn. He looks so furious.
“They jumped me and I got in trouble. Again,” he says. “It’s not fair. They get to go to class and I have to go home just because they have money and we don’t have any.”
“I’m sorry, buddy,” I say. I’m about to tell him to get into the bus and take him to class with me, but we’re already pushing the schedule to get to class anyway and I don’t like this. I’m tired of seeing him be pushed around.
I look at the school, and I look back at my brother, and I decide to do something.
“Come with me,” I tell him. “They’re not going to get away with this.”
“What are you doing?”
“Going to speak with the principal,” I say. I walk into the school with my brother in tow. I’m not sure how he feels about this, but he’s not telling me not to go in there.
“I’d like to see the principal, please,” I say at the front desk.
The receptionist looks at me as if I am one of the students at the school. I don’t look that young, but I have a feeling she looks at everyone that way.
“Principal Borland is busy.”
